to author and printer
(see Strype's _Ecclesiastical Memorials_). It may be seen in vol. xxx.
of the Percy Society's publications.]

LITERARY BLUNDERS.

When Dante published his "Inferno," the simplicity of the age accepted
it as a true narrative of his descent into hell.

When the Utopia of Sir Thomas More was first published, it occasioned a
pleasant mistake. This political romance represents a perfect, but
visionary republic, in an island supposed to have been newly discovered
in America. "As this was the age of discovery," says Granger, "the
learned Budaeus, and others, took it for a genuine history; and
considered it as highly expedient, that missionaries should be sent
thither, in order to convert so wise a nation to Christianity."

It was a long while after publication that many readers were convinced
that Gulliver's Travels were fictitious.[90]

But the most singular blunder was produced by the ingenious "Hermippus
Redivivus" of Dr. Campbell, a curious banter on the hermetic philosophy,
and the universal medicine; but the grave irony is so closely kept up,
that it deceived for a length of time the most learned. His notion of
the art of prolonging life, by inhaling the breath of young women, was
eagerly credited. A physician, who himself had composed a treatise on
health, was so influenced by it, that he actually took lodgings at a
female boarding-school, that he might never be without a constant supply
of the breath of young ladies. Mr. Thicknesse seriously adopted the
project. Dr. Kippis acknowledged that after he had read the work in his
youth, the reasonings and the facts left him several days in a kind of
fairy land. I have a copy with manuscript notes by a learned physician,
who seems to have had no doubts of its veracity. After all, the
intention of the work was long doubtful; till Dr. Campbell assured a
friend it was a mere jeu-d'esprit; that Bayle was considered as standing
without a rival in the art of treating at large a difficult subject,
without discovering to which side his own sentiments leaned: Campbell
had read more uncommon books than most men, and wished to rival Bayle,
and at the same time to give many curious matters little known.

Palavicini, in his History of the Council of Trent, to confer an honour
on M. Lansac, ambassador of Charles IX. to that council, bestows on him
a collar of the order of Saint Esprit; but which order was not
instituted till several years afterwards by